WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT UKRAINE?

 

The USA is 245 years old.  Russia is only 104.  China is just about 3500 years old, for the Shang Dynasty began ruling the country from the 17th century BC...for 600 years.  

Some say modern China came into existence around 220 BC.  Thus perhaps China is only 2242 years old today.

My past few postings have been way too long, so today, only Ukraine.  Will Putin attack?  When?  Why?

Remember Chernobyl?  This is the Ukraine town located 66 miles from Kyiv that 36 years ago was destroyed by the nuclear power explosion with 400 times the radiation of the Atom Bomb that fell above Hiroshima.  At one time there were 14,000 residents.  Today, 1000.

Malaysia Airlines never found flight 370, which disappeared on 8March 2014.  Lost forever were 227 passengers and 12 crew.  On July 17 of the same year, MH17 flew out of Amsterdam towards Kuala Lumpur.  Flying over eastern Ukraine, the plane was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew.

Ukraine is the second-largest country by area in Europe, next to Russia.  Neighbors are Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary Romania and Moldova, with coastlines along the Sea of Azov (the smaller water body) and the Black Sea.  Once spelled Kiev, the capital is now Kyiv.

Here are three questions that will surprise you.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was the largest country geographically in the world with 8.6 million square miles.  Which is the largest today?  Russia with 6.6 million sq.mi.  #2 country in size?  Canada with 3.9 million sq.mi.  Third, China with 3.7 million sq. mi.  Which country is #4?  The USA with 3.6 million sq.mi.

There is too much history linked to Ukraine that the thought of their joining the European Union deeply agitates Vladimir Putin.  The following explains why:

• Nikita Krushchev grew up in Ukraine and ran that republic before rising to the top of the Soviet Union in 1953.  
• It was Krushchev who transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.
• Leonid Brezhnev was born and raised in Ukraine, and eventually also took over the country, from Krushchev in 1964, until 1982.
• Another Ukrainian, Konstantin Chernenko then led from 1984 to 1985.
• The three were General Secretary for a combined 32 years.    In other words, Ukrainians brought the Soviet Union to world prominence.
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  Mikhail Gorbachev then came into power from 1985, introducing perestroika and glasnost, resulting in the end of the Cold War in 1989 and Soviet Union, called by Vladimir as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

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  Further, Kyiv was the capital of the first Russian state, way back in the 9th century.  
• Taras Bulba was a fictional hero of several historical personalities in some quarters, but is generally taken to be a Ukrainian resistance leader and associated with the Cossacks.  Perhaps you saw the film, with Yul Brynner.  Tony Curtis was his brother.
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  Putin does not want Russia to fracture the way the Soviet Union went.  In fact he feels obligated to return the nation to greater prominence.  He should be satisfied with my Christmas Eve gift to Russia, for:  The New York Times reports that Russia has the most to gain from global warming.

So will Russia attack Ukraine?  Who knows for sure.

Maybe Vladimir Putin remembers that Ukraine around 1015 had a prince named Vladimir the Great.  Certainly you know other prominent people born there like Louis B. Mayer, who co-founded MGM.  Also revolutionary Leon Trotsky, composer Sergei Prokofiev and two brothers, Wladimir  and Vitali Klitschko, who ruled the boxing heavyweight world for a decade.

I would have added the following video to my Odds and Ends posting of yesterday, but it was so lengthy that I present it today.

Apparently Okinawa, too celebrates New Year about now:

15 Craigside has moved our Chinese New Year dinner to lunch today, but it won't be as elaborate as this feast:

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